Category: werewolves

For six months the nightmares have been chasing Liv Lugaru out of her sleep. The same terrifying dream, the same fevered wolves panting after her, their hot breath getting closer and closer as a full moon hangs heavy in the night sky—until she wakes up drenched in sweat, with her fiancé, the brother of the man who broke her heart, gazing down at her . . .

Six months ago, Sebastian was almost killed by his brother in a power struggle within their werewolf pack. His disappearance opened the way for his brother to console Liv, win her trust . . . without ever telling her of their true heritage. Now Sebastian is ready to reclaim his rightful place—to rise up with the moon and claim the only woman he’s ever loved . . .

WARNING: This was a short read, one I’d classify as a novelette. A bedtime story for grown ups, perhaps, which I wasn’t expecting. I fully expected a full length novel because I didn’t bother to check Amazon or anywhere else for a length. Had I checked, I don’t think a length would have been listed anyway. And if any of my readers find one, please let me know because I saw nothing helpful.

Can you tell I’m a bit bitter?

The issue is this–if you’re expecting a novel about these werewolves and their lives together, look elsewhere. The description really does set up for a great, full length story. The problem is that there isn’t one. All you get is the basics with sex thrown in. The love scenes are great–sizzlin’ even–and, it read well, but I still really wanted more out of it. I believe a novel should have come from this.

*****

Erin McCarthy’s writing isn’t an issue. She’s great, actually. The characters were surprisingly well fleshed for such a short story. You get the gist of their personalities and backgrounds without an info dump, which is difficult when you’re working in shorter projects. I felt like I could get to know these characters and I felt like there weren’t too many to keep up with for the length of the story, which can also be an issue for shorter works.

An issue I had was that I wasn’t sure I liked (or disliked, if you will) the antagonist enough. Yeah, he was a bad boy. He tried to kill his brother. Blah blah blah, insert werewolf howl here. This is where a longer story would have come in handy. There was plenty of room for this to have become a novel so that a reader could have felt the full wrath of this guy–someone who tries to kill their flesh and blood (particularly a pack animal) has to have a good, solid reason for it. And that reason has to be something more than just a simple power struggle over who gets to be married to the girl or who gets to be the alpha. Sebastian’s brother had the potential to be one of the best bad guys in (erotic) romance, but the feelings of hate (or disdain, perhaps) that a reader should feel for the antagonist just didn’t come through strongly enough for me, which impacted my ability to enjoy the story as much as I would have had it been longer.

To clear up a few things, I am not a novelette hater. On the contrary, I quite enjoy them. But, putting forth the right amounts of this and that is almost a science where fiction lengths are concerned. In this area, I feel the mark was missed by a hair.

But, I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again. If the only thing a person finds wrong with a piece of literature is that there wasn’t enough of it, well, that’s not a horrible thing. It’s unfortunate, but certainly not enough for me to skip future works by this author. I did enjoy the characters and the plot and the saucier scenes were, um, saucy.

As far as a star rating, I’m going to go with a 3.5.

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